


i am not left handed either

by jonphaedrus



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Belligerent Sexual Tension, Canon Disabled Character, F/M, Fencing, May/December Relationship, Post-Canon, the swords are a metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 10:51:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13075320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: “Him, John! Hook! That horrible, awful man! That’s James Hook! He’s alive—here! In Oxford! And he’s following me!”





	i am not left handed either

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



> happy yuletide, the_alchemist!
> 
> this is almost definitely not entirely canon compliant to the book and pulls from a lot of sources along with the original novel and may have gotten a LITTLE out of hand. only a tiny bit.

Wendy did not speak of it until she was seventeen.

One blustery March evening, the walls of her boarding school shaking as the rain off of the cliffs pounded them and the wind howled, crouched under her blankets with Titania, she sighed. “Please, Wendy?” Titania begged, her dark eyes glittering slightly in the light through the windows where they peeked over the blankets, their whispering soft enough to not be heard over the rain, her black face in shadow, “You _must_ tell me. You always talk of that adventure!”

“It’s silly,” Wendy murmured, brushing her fingers over the back of her best friend’s hand, breaking their eye contact. “Child things, you know. I’m sure it wasn’t real.”

“Wendy—“ Titania gripped her hand tighter, brown eyes dancing, “Oh, you must. You _must_ tell me. What better time than this? We have all the time in the world, no-one to hear us. You promised, Wendy.” She had. “Please, darling, tell me. I want to know your secret, how you got that scar.”

“You must _swear_ ,” Wendy said, gripping her hand tight. A moment later she rolled over peeked out from under the blankets, pulled a pin off of the bedside table, brought it back over. She leaned up on her elbows. “Your blood and mine. You have to swear on it that you won’t tell a single soul.”

“Oh!” Titania replied, holding out her hand for Wendy to prick Titania’s fingertip, then her own. They pressed them together, blood mingling. Titania practically shuddered in excitement, her kinky coils of black hair bouncing on the pillow as Wendy settled back down. She sucked on her pricked finger, eyebrows waggling. “Spill, Wendy Moira!”

“You’re going to think it’s all fake, I’m making it up.”

“Absolutely not. Tell me, please, please, I _must_ know.” And so, by her request, Wendy did, the story spiralling out of her mouth between breaths. All the things that had led to Neverland, Peter, Hook, her brothers, everything. It never seemed real when she thought about it, but it _was_. She had the arrow scar to prove it. Her brothers remembered it as clear as she did.

“It sounds incredible,” Titania said at last, head pillowed on her shoulder as they spoke so late that the sky had begun to glow with false dawn. “I wish I had been able to go there and see it. The mermaids, the crocodile...it all sounds so incredible, Wendy. Amazing. I hope we can have adventures like that next year at Oxford.”

“Me too,” Wendy murmured, closing her eyes.

 

 

Titania noticed him first, their third term at Oxford. “I keep seeing this man,” she said one afternoon as they sat on one of the greens, eating lunch, finger sandwiches. It was sunny. “I don’t know what college he’s from, but he waits outside the chapel every Sunday after church.”

“How do you know he’s waiting for us?” Wendy replied, turning the page of her book. “He could be waiting for anybody.”

“Well, I thought he was staring at me,” Titania mused, sucking her fingertips clean. “Since I’m the only black woman in the whole school, but he never even _noticed_ me! I tried prancing right in front of him, but he didn’t notice me. I think he’s looking at you.”

Wendy paused.

“Well,” she said, tucking a curl back behind her ear, glancing up at Titania, “Is he handsome?”

Titania cackled.

“I should think so! He’s tall and _swarthy_ , Mediterranean or something of the like. Dark hair, curly, and these huge blue eyes...he dresses like a pauper, though. I’ll point him out to you on Sunday next, and let you decide for yourself.”

When the next Sunday came around, as they left from church, Titania hanging off of her elbow, the other woman pointed out the man she had noticed, and Wendy followed her glance. He was, indeed, tall and swarthy, his skin tan and his face scattered with smallpox scars. His dark hair curled in ringlets and was worn long, pulled back from his face. His clothes were a pauper’s, threadbare and worn in places, serviceable but old; fashion from before the war.

“I recognize him,” Wendy whispered to Titania, glancing away from him and looking studiously at her hands, the pale-pink lace of her gloves. They were a little small; they were Titania’s. “I don’t know from where.”

“Maybe you had noticed him before?” Titania replied as Wendy glanced back up at him as they moved away, turning her face slightly and letting Titania’s cloud of hair, thrown wild under her hat by the wind. “He’s been there for months.”

The man shifted, uncrossing his arms, and Wendy realized, suddenly, that his right hand ended in a stump, the sleeve buttoned up tight and sewn shut. She felt her heartbeat raise, pounding in her ears, and glanced to his face, her feet frozen to the spot. She heard Titania speaking, tugging at her hand, trying to get her to move. She could smell, as if from far away, poison. Hear the ticking of a clock. Titania was calling her name, and everything was rushing, she was panting, panting.

No right hand.

She glanced up, and met the man’s eyes—they were forget-me-not blue, bright as lamps in his terrible, beautiful face. He stared at her, unmoving.

Wendy fainted.

 

 

She woke up in the infirmary. The first thing she did was grab Titania’s hand, her best friend at her bedside. Behind her was her brother John, still two years younger but a year ahead of them in school, peering at her in terror. Wendy reached for him, desperately pulled him over.

“It’s _him_ ,” she hissed, her heartbeat still racing in her ears.

“Who?” John asked, feeling her forehead for a chill. “Wendy, what—“

“ _Him_ , John! Hook! That horrible, awful man!” She looked to Titania, whose eyes had gone so wide that the whites were visible all the way round. “That’s James Hook! He’s alive—here! In Oxford! And he’s following me!”

“He cannot possibly be,” John said. “Wendy, that was Neverland. This is _Earth_. He’s trapped there, that’s the whole point. Besides, Peter fed him to the crocodile!”

“It’s him, John. I swear, on grandmother’s grave, it’s true.”

His face clouded.

“I shall come have a look next week,” he settled on, squeezing her hand. “I’m sorry, Wendy. I believe you, I just...” he looked away from her. “As much as I loathe to put it to words, I had truly hoped he would perish in that contest with the crocodile. To wish death upon another is a sin, I know, but—“

Wendy squeezed his hand.

She knew.

 

 

The following Sunday, John came to church with them, and afterward he walked out, saw Hook, walked back in, and grabbed Wendy’s elbow. “Let’s go out the side,” he hissed, Titania dashing after them to keep up as they snuck out the rector’s entrance and around the back, escaping onto the grounds.

“It _is_ him,” Wendy hissed, triumphant but horrified. John didn’t look at her, still pale and wide-eyed with shock. “It is! He’s survived, and somehow come _here_. You don’t think he found a way out of Neverland on his own, did you? Or Peter helped?”

“I don’t _want_ to think about it,” John hissed, finally slowing his steps, Titania gasping as she caught up to them. He pulled his hands back from Wendy, scrubbed his fingers under his glasses. “Wendy, I don’t—I want to pretend none of this ever happened, and go about my life, and assume it’s a figment of both our imaginations.”

“It’s lovely for you to say that,” Wendy snarled. “He’s not following _you._ ” John at least bothered to look chagrined. “I’m going to the police.”

“Wendy, you can’t—what will you tell them?”

“Well, he’s been following me!” She straightened, shoulders thrown back. “That must be something!”

“At least prove it’s him first,” Titania said, wisely. “I know how frightened you must be, but if you know it’s him, you can recount the story as having been a treat toward you when you were a child. I’ll go with you everywhere, you can come with me to class, and let’s see if we can’t learn more about him.” Wendy chewed on her lip. “He may just be a lookalike who lost his hand in the war, although I really doubt it.”

“Fine,” Wendy acquiesced. “Fine.”

And so began the longest Trinity term of her life.

 

 

She and Titania became inseparable. They enrolled in the same classes, walked to all their meals together. The story that Wendy spun for their other friends was not the truth, only merely nearly, and they moved in a pack. The man who was Hook, she was sure of it, never stopped waiting outside after church, and as the months warmed and it began to look like spring, her ire grew. How _dare_ he, after all these years, come back and steal her life from her? How _dare_ he arise out of her dreams?

She could not abide it.

When she had been at boarding school, she had begun to fence—she had taken it up because of Peter, because of her childhood hope she might someday go back to Neverland with him. As the years had worn on and she had begun to realize to her horror that no, he would not remember to come back, she had refused to give it up in the case he _did_ come back and she dueled him for her right to Neverland. Then, she had just learned to love the sport.

She had kept up with it here at university. She was the best woman fencer in the whole of Oxford, as far as she knew, and one Monday when she spied Hook waiting on the green outside of Titania’s class, she got up. Ostensibly to go to the privy.

Instead, she went back to her room, and got into her fencing gear, and went looking for a fight.

He was where she had left him some half-hour before, staring up at the building she’d gone into that he’d seen her in last, and she was able to get within perhaps five meters of him before she yelled, “James Crichton Hook!”

He spun to face her, his forget-me-not blue eyes bright in the spring sunlight, his thickly curling hair escaping its tie. Wendy took her free foil and flung it at his feet, so hard it bounced in the grass.

He stared at the foil, and then stared up at her.

“I had begun to think you didn’t recognize me,” he said at last. “Wendy—“

“Pick the sword up, Hook,” Wendy growled. “Pick the damn sword up, and duel me. No nasty tricks this time. You’ve not got your hook. Fair and square, James. Duel me, and when I win I’ll run you straight through and finish the job Peter never was brave enough to do.” He bent down, and picked up the foil she’d thrown at him, checked its balance.

“Wendy, this is a training foil. It’s not even _sharp_.”

“Good,” Wendy snarled. “That means when I run mine through that black and ugly heart of yours, it will _hurt more_.” She didn’t give him any more time to stall, just moved straight towards him, taking the offensive. It had been years since she’d seen him fight, but she could remember it like it was but moments before—all of her memories from Neverland were frighteningly bright, raw and vivid in her mind like no time had passed at all. She knew most of his moves, most of his tricks.

He had no terrain to use to his advantage here—there was nothing to climb on or duck behind. There was no water, no rigging, no balancing acts. Just flat grass and cobble. He couldn’t very well enter any buildings. And, of course, _he did not have his hook_. He stumbled, trying to gain his footing against her onslaught, and soon was on the defensive, using Bonetti. He was taller than her, his reach longer, but Wendy was _mad_.

She switched to Agrippa, and the match began.

It was nothing like a bout fought to points. This was a bout fought to _blood_ , and she scored the first hit when Hook stumbled over old, broken cobbles and wavered, his ankle beginning to turn. Wendy took advantage, cutting a graze that sliced clean through his waistcoat and shirt over his shoulder, a long cut that crossed over his heart. He redoubled his efforts. Hook couldn’t have been young, even in earth years—he’d lived in Neverland for centuries and had honed his technique against Peter, the best swordfighter Wendy had ever seen—but he was a man in his forties at least, and it slowed him significantly.

“Can’t we talk about this?” Hook gasped, as he rapidly parried to push her into the defensive. She let him, backing into the green, getting more open space. “I wanted to _talk_ to you.”

“Oh, yes, because stalking me all across Oxford for the better part of a year is a way to talk. How did you even find me, you bastard?”

“I’ll remind you once again that I was a legitimate birth, think what you will of me asides. But there aren’t a lot of Wendy Darlings in the world, my dear girl!” He grinned, his dark cheeks flushing with exertion. He had his legs now, and he had her on the back foot. “It wasn’t too hard to follow the admittance lists.”

“And for what, Hook. Revenge?”

“I should want nothing of the sort.” The ring of steel upon steel was filling the courtyard, some of their strikes so fast that Wendy could barely stop to consider one before she was thrusting for another. “Can a man not wish to see what has become of a truly delightful girl? You’re a woman grown, Wendy. When I found myself once more upon England’s fair green shores, I thought but to see if you still lived.” Oh, she hated him. She loathed him. She _detested_ him, the odious, slimy, horrific man.

“I hope,” she snarled to him, “You feel some sense of satisfaction.”

And then she sprung.

He had chased her all around the courtyard, to a small raised path above a flight of stairs down to one of the basements—a boiler room, no doubt. He had his back to it, did not even know it was there. It was hidden behind a waist high wall, and Wendy struck forward again and again, throwing him into the defensive as he tried to stay out of the line of her blade. One of her ripostes went wide, threw stone chips off of the wall, and Hook yelped, throwing his hand over his face as they cut over his chin.

Wendy took the opportunity; she had learned from the best.

“Enjoy a taste of your own foul medicine,” she snarled, raised her foot in its heavy fencing shoe, and kicked Hook square in the stomach over the wall. He toppled backwards with a shout, a clang of steel on stone, and the sound of a man rolling down half of a flight of stairs. When he came to a stop, groaning, all Wendy could hear was the pound of her blood in her ears and her racing heartbeat, the nausea of too much exercise without any warm-up flooding her system as the adrenaline started to wear off. In the distance, she could hear cheering—Titania’s class had opened the windows of their room, and the rest of the classes around had followed suit, and were _cheering_ _her on_ , shouting encouragements and admonishments in equal measure.

Wendy had not before now even heard them.

She grabbed the top of the wall and vaulted over, hitting the stairs below with knees bent, and she took the remaining five in two quick steps to land over Hook, her feet on either side of his waist, and lifted her sword above his chest. She pressed the tip of his foil to his breast, against the scratch she had already bared his heart with, and dug it in until blood welled in drops from the tip. If she had thrust in hard enough, the blade would have been able to slip between his ribs and ram home, impale him straight through.

Hook stared up at her, dazed from his fall, still flushed, sprawled akimbo, with the _strangest_ look in his pale eyes, bright as the sky. His hair was lank and limp, stuck to his face and neck with sweat.

“Yield.” Wendy said it, not as a question. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. He nodded. She dug the tip in harder, and he winced in pain as more blood spilled out the narrow wound. “ _Say it,_ you coward. Speak the damn word from your lips or so help me—“

“I yield,” he whispered, hoarse. “You are the victor. I yield, I yield. For God’s sake, Wendy, I yield.”

For a moment she hesitated, and she felt bile in the back of her throat.

Peter had never been able to do it. She had always hoped Peter would do him in properly, a dagger between the ribs or across the throat. But he was capricious, delighted in the constant threat of his rival. Without Hook, he would have fallen apart, bored and lost. Could she do what he had not been able to bring himself to do?

Hook was an old coward.

Wendy pulled her foil back, and took the blade she had thrown at Hook’s feet, and stormed away.

 

 

Students met her in a rush in the green, crowding around. Asking questions. Who was the man, why was she fighting him, what was going on. There were accolades, crowed delights over her talent with the blade, begging her to teach them.

Wendy went straight to Titania, who had John’s elbow tight in her grip, and she buried herself in her brother’s chest, holding to his coat as he held her close, Titania pressed up beside them. Wendy breathed in the scent of John’s laundry, so very like home, and calmed her racing heart, the heaving terror and illness inside her.

The crowd around her began to hush, and she pulled away, turned to face Hook. He had limped back out of the stairwell he’d fallen down, and held his remaining hand over the gash in his shirt and the bloody puncture wound Wendy had left him. He wasn’t dazed any more—his eyes were as sharp as she had ever seen them—and he glanced at her companions.

“Go away!” Titania yelled, either at him or at the crowds. “Go away, all of you, or I’ll blast fumes in the whole courtyard!” The students began to disperse, milling about and then wandering off. Some tried to stay in hearing range, but soon they had all retreated at least back to the building. They were as alone as they would ever be.

John stepped in front of Wendy, put himself between her and Hook. Titania had her eyes narrowed and, Wendy noticed, belatedly, a flask of acid in her hand, her fingers tight around the cork.

Hook glanced at all three of them, and then sketched a stiff bow to Titania. He had his missing hand pressed to the small of his back. He probably ached from his fall, but Wendy could not find it in her to muster even a single ounce of sympathy. “James Hook,” he told Titania. “It seems you know of my relationship to the Darlings.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll throw this on your face, and keep pouring until you die of it.” Titania had bared her teeth, and Wendy clutched at her best friend’s elbow, never gladder for another soul in her life.

“You are a remarkably good friend,” Hook settled on, turned back to John and Wendy. “John. You’ve grown.”

“Tends to happen outside of Neverland, yes. You just look _worse_.”

Hook grimaced, his lips thinning, all teeth. “Tends to happen as you age. I’ve found becoming forty in troth agrees with me naught.”

“What do you want.”

“Same as I told your sister; I want to talk.” Hook shrugged. “It’s been centuries since I found myself upon Earth. I’ve no person here save you three. I had hoped to at least find a kick in the teeth and perhaps a blanket for my troubles.”

“I,” Wendy told him, prim and proper, “Would be happy to repeat my previous actions, and aim my kick at your teeth this time.”

Hook blanched. He’d learned his lesson when it came to Wendy. _Good_.

 

 

Hook vanished after that, for the rest of the term. Trinity came and went until the end of classes without him appearing again in her line of sight. Wendy did learn from her friends that he was still around Oxford campus, but far from anywhere she haunted. He seemed content, now he knew she let lived, to have nothing to do with her, and for that, she was glad. She went home for summer and saw friends and family, reuinted with the Lost Boys all home from their own schooling, and neither she nor John spoke of it at all.

The following fall, Michelmas term began, and Wendy went back to campus feeling lighter. If Hook lived, fine. It wasn’t _her_ problem; she wouldn’t question it. She would just hope he stayed away from her, which he had. Those first few weeks as they tried to settle back into their class schedule again were stressful and chaotic, but exciting in a way that little else was. So it wasn’t until the third week of term that Wendy started attending fencing club again, this time as a teacher.

And it wasn’t until two weeks later that Hook arrived.

He stood at the back corner of the room, not talking to or interacting with anyone, just watching. He came after club started and left before it ended so Wendy never interacted with him, and he rarely even just watched her. He watched _all_ the girls.

“It’s not _lecherous_ ,” Patty, one of the first years, said at lunch one day. “He’s never just. Staring at us, hoping our skirts will fall down. He’s watching our _forms,_ I think. Isn’t he the one you had that big duel with last year?”

Wendy grunted.

“How do you know him, Wendy? He’s so handsome! I can’t think of any other man I’ve seen with hair like that. It’s so...old fashioned, don’t you think? But he makes it look so good. And his hand—I bet he lost it in some really heroic way in the war!”

Wendy choked on her sandwich, and Titania had to pound her on the back until she coughed up the bread, hacking with her head between her knees, before she started ugly laughing. In the war—heroic! “He had it cut off,” she said. “I’ve no doubt it was not heroic at all, although I wasn’t there. I’ve heard _quite_ clear accounts, both from him and the man who did the cutting.”

Patty gasped. “You _know_ him?” She grabbed at Wendy’s skirt. “I mean, not Hook! Whoever cut off his hand! That must be monstrous.”

“No,” Wendy disagreed, pulling her skirt out of Patty’s grip. “No. James is—“ Maybe. “He deserved it,” she corrected. “At the time. I can’t find fault in the man that did it. It’s not all cut and dried,” she said, staring at her food. “I’m sorry. There’s no exciting story.”

Patty was truly let down, but that wasn’t Wendy’s problem. No, _her_ problem started up again the following week, at club practice, when Hook suddenly pushed himself up off of the wall and crossed through the dueling partners throughout the room, came to the pair three down from where Wendy was working, and gently caught one of the foils. It was a pair of partners that had been difficult recently, bouts ending in tears and frustration.

“You’re totally open here,” he said, gruffly, to one of the girls. She giggled, and Wendy glared at the back of her head like her hair could catch on fire. “See, look at your wrist—it’s listing sideways with the foil.” He didn’t touch her without her permission, just gestured at her wrist and hand. “It’s making your entire form sloppy.”

“James!” Wendy barked, and he looked up at her. She bit down on any shudder of revulsion she felt upon meeting his pale eyes. “ _You_ aren’t club tutor.”

“No,” he agreed amicably. “But I have some small skill. You’re doing an admirable job, but I _am_ the one who taught Peter.” Wendy ground her teeth. “Surely the master of the student’s master should know more than the student?”

She considered running him through. He certainly still had the scar. She had proper blades in here; sharp and deadly. Maybe cut his other hand off.

Wendy let out a slow breath. “Fine. What did you think she should do?”

“Miss?” James turned toward the student he’d interrupted, “If I may?”

“Please!” She giggled, and Wendy debated kicking her in the ankle. “You may whatever you want!” Disgusting.

James took her sword. “You need to practice with a weighted version,” he told her, not unkindly. “The main issue you’re having, why you keep getting scored on no matter your stance, is that your wrists just aren’t strong enough to keep the foil straight and near enough to parry in time. Start by holding the sword in front of you for ten minute intervals with your arm straight out, then twenty, then thirty. Then go to a heavier sword, one of the ones meant for the men’s club should be good.”

Wendy huffed an angry noise out her nose. James raised his eyebrows at her. “Was that fine?”

“He’s right,” she told the student. “That _is_ what you need to do. Your form is creating weaknesses that are only exacerbating the struggles you’re having winning strikes. You should practice between club meetings.”

“Oh, I _definitely_ will,” the woman said, accepting her sword back. “Thank you,” she giggled, and added, “ _James_.”

“Hook,” he corrected her, not unkindly. Nodded to Wendy.

It continued. Every week he would do something a little more, working in tandem with Wendy and the other instructors. As much as she _loathed_ it, she knew his help was invaluable. He was a master swordsman, and his skill on the fencing salle was without peer. He had learned to fence left-handed just as well as he had with his right, and he could swap without difficulty between more blades than she’d ever even used. He was a master of the art, and his advice began to help her improve as well.

It had been a long time since she’d improved. When Wendy had outstripped most of her tutors, that had been the end for her. Women didn’t learn to fence, not easily, and not well. So as much as she chafed and balked at his interference, she couldn’t stop him. Nobody else minded, and it was helping. And he never stopped her or pushed her, never stepped into her boundaries and corrected her.

She went home after Michelmas term for the winter holidays, and practiced her swordplay every single day, Michael copying her, showing her what he was learning in his own lessons. Her parents, as always, encouraged her to find a more ladylike hobby—sewing, or cooking.

Wendy loathed to sew. She never could forget the noises Peter had made when she sewed his shadow back on, how he’d kept whimpering and crying out, trying to wriggle away and escape the prick of the needle. She couldn’t unsee it in her mind’s eye, and cooking just made her think of how she had been someone’s _mother_. A mother, to a boy her own age—a mother sought by a man thrice hers. She was no mother. She didn’t ever really want to be again.

No. No ladylike hobbies.

Wendy had learned, the hard way, with an arrow through her breast, that kindness of that sort, the begging kind where you rolled over and showed your soft belly, got you _nothing_. She would be made of steel and iron, and _demand_ everything the world didn’t want to give her.

 

 

In Hilary term, Wendy stopped James one night after the club had dispersed. “Why are you here,” she asked. He stared at her.

“Helping you with your fencing club? Because I had nothing better to do, and I think it’s a good idea. Teaching women to defend themselves has always been good; I always let women on my crew. And because you, frankly, looked like you could use a hand. You got a lot of students after trouncing me.”

“At _Oxford_ ,” she corrected. “I am almost certain I don’t want to learn the details of how you left Neverland, and without your crew, hook, or boat to boot. But why here?”

James shrugged. “I’ve no proof of my identity. It was easy enough to blend as a soldier displaced by the war—I was genuinely distraught when I arrived in England. I’ve been here since before you came to school. They offered me a job as a groundskeeper, since factory work is impossible for me.” It made sense. “Does it matter?”

“Teach me.” Wendy said.

James stared at her.

“My apologies,” he said, still staring. “I seem to have misheard you. Did you just ask me to _teach_ you?”

“Really teach me. Not just improving form and function in fencers who do it as a hobby and will never use it for anything a day in their lives. _Teach_ me, James. I know I’m not anything on the level of you or Peter. I won that bout between us because of the element of surprise, a better knowledge of the terrain, and you pulling your punches.” A quick smile tucked into the corner of his mouth revealed the truth; it did not sting. His mistake had been to underestimate her. He hadn’t been trying to lose.

He had just thought she could not follow through on the hit. More fool he.

“I have so much I can learn, and you’re the only person here who can—or will—teach me.”

“Is this,” he began, still smiling, “An offer of a truce, Wendy Moira Angela Darling?”

“Consider it a temporary ceasefire until I decide to turn the artillery back on the trenches, James Crichton Hook.”

 

 

He was not odious. He was actually quite polite. Their first few sessions together, holding practice foils, were stilted and awkward, held in the classroom they’d taken over for club before he decreed that the flat field to practice on was useless to any _real_ learning, and they moved outside. James picked a low, sloped area of one of the outer greens for them to meet on, and most of the time, it was totally empty. The few times they ran into anyone there, the previous occupants left almost immediately when Wendy and James got their swords out.

They wanted no part in that.

At first, they just sparred. It went half and half, most times—James wasn’t an expert with the foil, and without his hook he was down half his combat skill, and slower now he was getting older again, with Earth-food and Earth-body rather than Neverland. But he was still skilled enough that every bout was close, and sometimes closer, more often than not a draw.

After a month of this, twice a week, James stepped back, disengaged, foil at rest at his side, and held up his hand. “Your ankles,” he said, suddenly. “I thought something was off. Pull your skirt up.”

Wendy lifted her foil up and thwacked him, _hard_ , over the bicep. He winced, rubbed at it, glared at her. “Please. Just to your knees.” Wendy groaned and did so, showing her ankles, and James crouched down with a little difficulty, his hands balanced on his knees, to gesture. “These heels, that’s what is weakening your lunges. You need flat shoes, with a rounder toe. You need all your weight on your heel to be able to properly get a thrust in like that.”

He looked up at her then, his blue eyes bright in the last light of sunset, shadows falling over his sharp face. Like this, Wendy could see a few threads of grey in his curly black hair, and she stared at him, let her skirt drop. Tried not to think about how strangely heady it was to have him at her feet, on his knees.

“And where,” she asked James, “Would I find shoes like that that fit me?”

He grinned. “London, probably.” She narrowed her eyes, made a note of it for her shopping when she went home next.

“Cheeky,” she told him, but let it be.

 

 

The next week, James showed up with a triple weighted sword, and they sparred with her using that. It slowed her arms and left them aching, but she kept up. The week after that, he blindfolded her. The week after that, he came to meet her after class and invited her running, and they began to run first a kilometer, then five, and then ten.

By the end of Hilary term, Wendy could run ten kilometers without a break, could use a thrice-weight foil as fast as her own, and her own so fast she surprised herself with the way it spun and danced in her hands, and could tell when a strike was coming by where the air whistled. At the end of their last match of the term, James bowed to her, smiled.

“Soon enough,” he told her, “I won’t have anything else to teach you, either.”

In Trinity, they started to work on weaknesses and strengths of footing and position. It rained one week, pouring until the ground could suck up no more water and the greens began to flood to ankle-depth, the mud that followed slick and sticky.

When Wendy came down to meet James, she found him barely dressed, without even full-length sleeves. “Put on a proper shirt,” she told him, arms crossed. He was in just an athletic undershirt. “You’re indecent.”

“We’re going to go roll in the mud,” he replied, nodding to her. “You need to go get indecent, unless you want to have to wash all the mud off of that.”

She stuck her foil point-first in the soft turf, scowled at him, and went back to change. She came back down in a slip for a skirt, a dirty shirt with the sleeves rolled and pinned, and the practical shoes she’d bought in London on her last trip home. They walked in silence across the greens in the growing dusk, sticking mostly to the harder paths where they could, until James cut across the grass and into an open quad, came to a halt on the side of a hill above a flooded pond.

“I can guess the point of this,” Wendy told him, lifting her foil as he untucked his from where it was trapped under his good arm. “You don’t need to pontificate.”

“Good,” he replied lightly. “En garde, then, Miss Darling.”

They only got perhaps five exchanges into their bout before James stumbled, his foot going awkward on the hill. “Look out!” Wendy called, as his balance went sideways, her own still and stable. He said some choice words, grabbed helplessly for her, accidentally got her skirt. Wendy yelped, trying to hold it up as James threw out his bad hand.

His arm squelched into the mud, his wrist splattering mud upward as he lost his balance completely, faceplanted into the dirt. His grip on her skirt tugged Wendy down too, with a shriek, and together the two of them rolled over in a heap of arms, legs, hair, and cloth, to tumbled down the hill in a knot.

They came to a halt in the pond. James, luckily, landed on the bottom.

“My apologies,” he wheezed, once they both had their breath back. Wendy sat up off of him, her blond hair in total disarray, and spat mud out of her mouth, wiping it off of her forehead. Her bun had come out and her hair was all over her face, neck, and back. There was mud in her _ears_. “I thought I had a hand there and didn’t.”

“I can see that,” Wendy spat back as James leaned up out of the pond, wincing. His hair looked like he’d rubbed mud in it until it caked into a mass, his stubble rough with the stuff. It had gotten down his shirt, and stuck his chest hair flat. He shook his head. “Why _did_ you stop wearing your hook?” She asked, squeezing water out of her hair, trying (failing, in vain) to wring it dry. “This can’t be any easier.”

He sighed, leaning up and throwing his elbows over his knees. “I lost it,” he said, not looking at her. “That damn crocodile. Finally caught up with me; I cut my way back out with it.”

Wendy squeezed her eyes shut, shuddered. “Oh,” she said, soft and pained. “Oh, that’s horrific.” James choked on a quiet laugh in response. “That’s disgusting.”

“You have no idea,” he agreed, amicably enough. “Guts and blood everywhere. I stank of it for what felt like months. After that, when I wound up back here, I figured...” he lifted his missing hand, and stared at his wrist. The skin there was pale with scar tissue, where the original wound had been cauterized shut. Probably well over a hundred years before, too—there had been plenty of time between then and now for it to heal. But it still looked raw and ugly. “The hook is a weapon for trying times. It’s not civilized. I used it to injure and kill.”

“So? You could get a different hook.”

“I don’t want to be Captain Hook any more,” James said softly. He looked at Wendy with his soft, pale eyes, bright in the low twilight. “I don’t want to be that man for even a single day longer. Peter was right to cut my hand off, even if it was done in cruelty and meant to hurt me. Without it, I have to be better. I have to _do_ better.”

Wendy stared at him, at the shadows under his high cheekbones, the crow’s feet beside his eyes, the stubble on his upper lip. “I don’t think he was right,” she said, softly. “I think it was awful of him. It’s not a thing to do—take a trophy from a victory. Feed it to a crocodile.”

“Nobody would ever believe me if I told them that story,” James laughed, chagrined, looking away. “Some days, I’m not sure I believe it myself.”

Wendy, without thinking, reached out. Cupped his cheek, turned him back to look at her. “He should not have tortured you,” she said, softly. Neither of them blinked, his pale eyes stared back at her, his full-lipped mouth soft with...something. Something she was yet too hesitant to name. “And I think you shouldn’t torture yourself, either.”

And then she leaned forward, still cupping her cheek, and kissed him. He froze, still, against her. It could hardly be considered a kiss, more a brush of lips and a graze of cheek and chin, but when she pulled back he was still staring at her.

His good hand had taken her elbow, at some point, and he held her still, near him. This close, Wendy could feel how hot he was, even through the chill of mud and water. She could see the rise and fall of his chest—he was almost panting.

“Wendy,” James began, very softly, and then stopped. Like he’d meant to continue, but the words had failed him and petered into silence and fear.

“I didn’t like Captain Hook much,” Wendy murmured, not looking away from his eyes, bright as stars, “But I rather like James. I think even Peter might.”

“Jas,” he corrected. “Just Jas, now.”

“Jas,” Wendy agreed, as low and soft as he. She had framed him with her arms, her left hand sunk into the mud and silt at the bottom of the pond, soaking her skin halfway up her forearm. She leaned up again, rocked up onto the heels of her palms, and his hand slid from her elbow to the small of her back, pulled her forward too, and he turned his head down to meet her. And kiss her.

And then, he pulled her closer, until they were flush from the neck to the waist, and then _closer still_ so that they were sharing body heat, breathing the same breath, and kissed rather a lot more, until the both of them had completely forgotten about their sopping clothes, their missing foils, or anything else outside of that strange pocket of heat and time, paused in the otherwise-constant turning of the world.


End file.
